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Comment by donor20 | Hacker News Reader

No question - trump is the absolute worst republican you could run it seems. Short run I don't think republicans have a chance.

But feeling / being safe is CRITICAL to folks - they will accept dictatorships to gain safety. The whole abolish ICE / defund the police type platform seems a loser long run for the dems. I'm surprised Biden didn't make a stronger statement distancing himself form this. The violence is really toxic.

I'm a reliable dem voter and significant dem donor this cycle, but if you actually live or have lived in "tough" neighborhoods with higher crime (ie, have had your car broken into multiple times, stolen, experienced violence) then you really do start to prioritize safety.

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Yes, safety is important. George Floyd should have been able to feel safe. Breonna Taylor should have been safe in her bed. Who's violence are we talking about here? What does high crime neighborhoods have to do with police not killing people wantonly?

If you follow the instructions of the police officers you have little reason to not feel safe. If you fight, resist, run etc. you've given up your rights to safety.

Essentially - you should follow all orders given by police officers, whether they are justified or not. If you don't, you forfeit all rights to be alive.

How on earth can you possibly say that? Not following the orders of some jacked up power trip officer means you've given up all your rights to be alive?

This has to be the worst take in the entire thread.

You follow instructions and then take legal action later.

Very easy to say from a distance, not so easy to not resist when someones pointing a gun at you or gripping you so tightly you're being strangled to death.

Breonna Taylor was asleep when she got killed. Which instruction did she not follow?

Daniel Shaver did all that and still was murdered by the police. There are many more examples.

You dont have to follow unlawful orders but on the hand the Police can lie to you without any repercussions.

There are, at minimum, 50 million police-citizen encounters in the USA annually. Fewer than 1200 individuals are killed by police in a given year, on average. The odds of an unarmed American who does not pose a direct threat being shot by the police are fewer than one-in-a-million.

Does that justify the police killing people without any repercussions?

here's a man who was laying down on the ground, hands in the air, talking calmly. cop still shot him:

> When the 2016 incident occurred, Soto had fled his group home with a shiny silver toy truck. Kinsey, a behavioral therapist, lay down on the ground, put his hands in the air and tried to explain to officers that both he and Soto were unarmed, according to video of the incident taken by a witness.

> Aledda then fired his rifle at Soto, striking Kinsey in the leg, as radio communication clarified the toy Soto held wasn't a gun

> [the police officer] did not serve any prison time and instead was sentenced to probation and asked to write a 2,500 word essay on policing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/18/florid...

Most people who don't live in high-crime neighborhoods very much desire for their neighborhood not to become one. If we tell them the choice is between overly aggressive police and no police, they'll pick the aggressive police, no matter what tragedies overaggressive policing has caused.

But it's a false choice.

Absolutely! There's no reason the police couldn't just be respectful and nonviolent. Many police forces in the country already manage it. That's why I think "defund the police" is self-defeating messaging; many people understand it to mean that reform is impossible and the only way to reduce police violence is to reduce police presence.

Statistically, the "strong police force" side cares more about black lives. Anecdotally, maybe not.

1. The vast majority of murdered black people are murdered by non-cops, even if you categorize any time someone gets killed by a cop a "murder", regardless of context.

2. This number will go up, not down, if you abolish/defund police forces.

There really isn't much more to it than that. The biggest threat to a black person's life is another black person, not a cop. Would it be better if cops didn't murder unarmed people? Absolutely and emphatically YES. But that means better training, which in turn means more funding, not less.

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